Oakley making progress

Sports scientist Jason Moriarty was able to deliver a positive report on the first two days of pre-season training to manager Neal Ardley.

The long-serving member of the Dons backroom staff also had further good news for supporters with an update on the fitness of forward George Oakley (pictured in the gym with Jason at our New Malden training ground).

“He is making steady progress so far,” said Moriarty in an extensive interview to Dons Player.

“George broke his ankle five and a half months ago. He started running during the off season and we had a bit of a blip when he felt pain and discomfort when he had the pin removed from his leg,” he explained.

“Prior to pre-season we got him doing a little bit more functional work and so at the moment he is running and able to do technical drills. Because of the fatigue element placed on someone who hadn’t actually done anything for five and a half months his likelihood of getting injured again is increased when he’s under fatigue, so we’re just being cautious when we do put him back into the contact part of the game.”

The Dons four new summer signings, goalkeeper Ryan Clarke, midfielders Chris Whelpdale and Dean Parrett and forward Dominic Poleon, have also fitted in well at this early stage in the build-up to next month’s League One kick-off at Walsall on August 6.

“They’ve settled in really well. We’ve educated them on how the manager expects them to train and the intensities he expects them to train at, but they are four good characters. Dominic asked me today to do some sprints with him after training in order to get his stats higher. If this continues we’ll have some good additions to the squad.”

“It’s gone really well,” added Moriarty. “We’ve compared the first two days of pre-season to last season. We’ve covered more distance and more sprint distance to what we did last season and the main thing is that we know players aren’t reporting to be stiff and sore the next morning. We know we’re able to give the players the hard work and they are not going to react negatively.”

“In terms of the hard work we do we’ve covered the same distance, but more work has been done in high-intensity. When players work in a higher intensity we know their heart rate is going to be higher so we know they are going to get fitter every time we work at a higher intensity. Again, the players aren’t reporting they are stiff or sore.”

Everything at the moment is now being geared towards the Dons first pre-season friendly at Crabble against Dover Athletic next Tuesday, kick-off 7.45pm.

“The gaffer’s philosophy is that everything is done on the ball. We don’t do any running to poles or running around Richardson Evans like the old Wimbledon did.”

“Our week now is based on enhancing their ability to work from the first to the last minute. We’ve done three blocks of nine minutes of eleven versus eleven on Tuesday and we’ll progress that tomorrow to doing three blocks of ten minutes so that they’ve had thirty minutes of hard work before we play Dover on Tuesday.”

The full eight minute interview with Jason Moriarty, including his thoughts on being at the club during the time it has climbed from non-league to League One, is now available to Dons Player subscribers.